Wood rot repairs have started on the exterior to prep for painting. I love the idea of a white farmhouse…such a surprise I know! All will be painted Cloud White by Ben Moore, except the porch floors will be a dark taupe {still stewing over the exact color}. We trimmed the bushes {such a beautiful view of the lake} and removed the screen on the porch. We will try the open porch, and hopefully the bugs won’t force us to screen it again.

We removed all the shutters on the house except the ones on the porches. Less shutters will give the exterior a more “Modern Farmhouse” appeal, and I hope to use the ones we removed to create a fence around the air conditioner units.

Before…

After!

It took about 6 tries until we developed the right stain color. The beautiful old growth heart pine floors have a very orange undertone, so we worked to find a color with more blue undertones to neutralize the orange. Blue and orange are complimentary colors, when complimentary colors are mixed, you get a nice neutral color. After drying, the one I thought might work turned out too yellow.

But we finally made a custom stain color that looked like the pale washed French oak driftwoody color I wanted.

Can you see the black patch in the top right corner? Well…that is what the entire kitchen floor looked like. After 4 days, the glued-down tar paper revealed a beautiful pine floor.

I don’t think this floor is as old as the rest of the house because the face size is smaller and the color is more of a golden yellow.

But look how beautiful they look with just the first coat.

Watching the floors dry requires patience…it felt like watching the garden bloom! And as you can see, our flowers are blooming beautifully.

Our spinach is huge and really peppery.

Jim should have some peppers soon. The small {very small} trees are pomegranate trees developed by the University of Florida.

Thank you Lord for all your many blessing.

These swings were gifted to us by the exterior painter. My right hand is stuck in pressure washing mode, but no longer black and moldy, the swings look great hanging under the camphor tree.

Bud hung Jim’s hammock for his birthday under the huge Holly Berry tree canopy. Once the chain link fence is replaced, this will be a special spot.